"LET'S GOOOOOOOOOO! COME ON! THAT'S WHAT I'M TALKING ABOUT! FINALLY! YES! COME ON, LET'S DO THIS ALREADY!"
Thousands of televisions all over the world had just been turned on to CBS Golazo, and before a single person watching had even settled into their seat, before anybody had worked out what they were looking at, the voice of Micah Richards came out of their speakers at full volume.
"HAHAHAHA."
Jamie Carragher was already gone, folded over in his chair.
Thierry Henry had a smile all over his face, laughing softly, and one hand up rubbing at his own ear.
"Micah. HAHAHA. Micah."
Beside them, Kate Abdo's face had screwed up completely.
"Oh, God."
She groaned, and then turned to camera with the composure of a woman who has done this many, many times.
"Ladies and gentlemen, I would like to deeply apologise for."
She turned her head and looked at Micah, darkly.
"That."
"Sorry." Micah was laughing, and there was not a single trace of sorry anywhere on his face. "Sorry, sorry. I've just been extra pumped today."
Then, immediately, both fists going up again:
"LIKE, WOW. YEAH, MAN!"
Jamie was wheezing.
"You cannot be serious," Kate said.
"Micah." Thierry was laughing harder now too. "Micah, I get you. I get you so well. I have not been able to calm down since yesterday, honestly. HAHAHA."
"Please." Kate closed her eyes. "Not you as well, Thierry."
Thierry turned to her, still grinning.
"I can understand it from those two." She gestured at Jamie and Micah without looking at either of them. "But you."
"What?" Jamie sat up. "Which two? Hang on. Which two?"
Thierry just laughed and spread his hands.
"Sorry, Kate. But I mean." He shrugged. "It is the Champions League final."
"YES IT IS," Jamie shouted.
Micah spun to face him.
"I know, right? I'm so excited. I genuinely cannot wait another hour. I can't."
The two of them were off again, and Kate sat between them shaking her head.
Then she turned back to the camera, and the professional came down over her like a curtain.
"Well. You heard them, folks."
She straightened her papers.
"It is the Champions League final, and this is UCL Today on CBS Sports. I am your host, Kate Abdo, and unfortunately, these three are my co-hosts for the evening."
"OHHH," Micah said, mouth open.
"Ouch," Jamie said, laughing.
"So this is the Micah treatment, is it," Thierry said, smiling.
Kate ignored all three of them and carried on.
"Champions League winner himself, and Liverpool legend."
Jamie sat back and adjusted his jacket, thoroughly enjoying himself.
"Even if a lot of Liverpool fans would disagree."
Thierry and Micah's mouths both dropped open, laughing, and Jamie's face went with them.
"Hang on."
Kate simply smiled and moved on.
"Another fellow Champions League winner. An all-round legend of the game. One of the greatest players ever to grace it."
Thierry closed his eyes and braced.
"And now a respectable pundit, who I would like to return."
Thierry shook his head, taking it on the chin.
"I will take that."
Micah was laughing at both of them, right up until he heard it.
"And lastly."
His head snapped round.
"Okay." He sat back and opened his arms. "Okay, let it rip."
He was squirming already, shaking his shoulders out like a man about to take a punch.
"Go on. There is nothing you can say today. Nothing. There is nothing that is going to reduce my mood today."
Jamie reached across and patted his shoulder, encouraging.
Kate just looked at him.
And she smiled.
"And."
She smiled again.
"And former professional player, Micah Richards."
Micah opened his eyes.
"Is that it?"
He looked genuinely confused.
"No bench player? No jokes? No nothing?"
Kate smiled at him, sweetly.
"Well, Micah, I just really want us to get back to our job and do it well today."
Jamie and Thierry looked at each other.
Jamie leaned in and muttered, low, for Henry only.
"He doesn't realise what she just did."
Thierry looked back at him and shook his head slowly, side to side.
"As you may all know," Kate said, "this is the Champions League final."
She turned in her chair.
"So let us go to our great minds. And Micah. For their thoughts on today's match."
"Ah," Thierry said.
"Ahhh," Jamie said.
Micah shook his head and muttered to nobody.
"Spoke too soon."
The whole desk went up.
"So." Kate was laughing now too. "What are your thoughts for the match today? Favourites, insights, whatever you have got."
Thierry went first.
"Well. As for favourites."
He put his hands together on the desk.
"Now, I will admit. I have not picked them every time in this tournament. I have not. And I might have underestimated them a time or two."
He shook his head.
"But every single time, they have demonstrated pure." He stopped, and shook his head again. "I do not even know how to describe it, honestly. But they have shown, over and over, exactly why they deserve to be here."
He lifted his chin.
"And now I am fully behind them."
Then, firmly:
"Barcelona to win the whole thing."
"FINALLY," Micah said.
Everyone turned to look at him.
"What? No, seriously." Micah spread both arms wide. "I have been telling you lot, from the start, Barcelona are the team to be behind. From the START. And FINALLY, finally, you are all listening to me."
"Oh, come on," Jamie said.
Thierry shrugged.
"But he is right, though. He has been saying it the whole way."
"Thank you, Titi."
Thierry shook his head at the nickname.
"I know he has been saying it," Jamie cut in. "I know. But."
"But what? What buts?" Micah leaned forward. "Just give me my credit. Just once."
Jamie started laughing.
"You were lucky, mate."
Micah's whole face changed.
"What? LUCKY?"
"Yes. Luck."
"Well." Micah sat back and folded his arms. "You can call it whatever you want to call it. Luck, whatever, fine. It does not change the fact that I was right about Barcelona."
Kate turned to him.
"So I take it you are backing Barcelona to win it all."
Micah did not hesitate for even a fraction of a second.
"One hundred percent."
He shook his head, as if correcting himself.
"One THOUSAND percent."
Kate turned the other way.
"And from the look of things, I take it you are backing Chelsea?"
Jamie shook his head.
"No. I am not saying that."
He put a hand up.
"I am not saying Chelsea are going to win it."
"Well," Micah said. "It sounded like that."
"No."
"Yes." Thierry nodded. "Yes, it did sound like that."
"Yes, I agree." Kate was nodding too. "It did sound like that."
"Well, I am not." Jamie sat forward and put both hands flat on the desk. "What I am saying is that this is not as cut and dry as everybody is making it out to be."
He started counting it out.
"I understand why Barcelona are the favourites. I do. I completely understand it. But nobody should be underestimating Chelsea."
"Nobody is, though," Thierry said.
"Yeah, I mean." Micah shrugged. "Who is underestimating a team that has reached a Champions League final? Nobody is saying they are bad."
He tilted his head.
"It is just that Barcelona are better."
Jamie's hand shot up.
"THAT."
He pointed at Micah.
"That. That right there. That is the thing. That they are better."
He shook his head.
"That has to be recency bias, honestly. It has to be."
He was properly going now.
"Because just a few weeks ago, we were sitting at this exact desk saying that Barcelona's squad was not that good. We were. All of us. Yes, they have their highlights, yes they have the special players, but we sat here, on this show, and we listed their weaknesses one by one."
He gestured at the studio around him.
"And now, a few weeks later, and a couple of games later, all of a sudden they are being talked about like an all-time great team. An all-time team."
He raised a finger.
"And let us all remember something. Chelsea are the ultimate underdogs here. And history has shown, over and over, that Barcelona struggle against teams that play like Chelsea play."
Micah scoffed.
"Come on. Come ON. You said exactly the same thing about Atlético Madrid."
"I am just saying." Jamie was not backing down. "I will not be surprised if Chelsea win this thing. Despite all of the claims, despite all of it. And honestly, this revisionism on Barcelona needs to be studied."
Thierry leaned in.
"But is it not warranted, though?"
"Yes." Micah jumped straight on it. "Two back-to-back massive wins in the league, four goals in both, against both Madrid sides. BOTH of them."
He held up a hand.
"Not even to talk about the best Champions League campaign I have ever seen."
Jamie's head came round.
"Wow. The best?"
"Yes. The best." Micah did not flinch. "The thriller in Paris. The back and forth with Bayern, which was ridiculous. And then that beauty of a game against Manchester City. I mean it when I say it. That is the best campaign I have ever seen. Easily the most entertaining."
Jamie shrugged.
"I am not sure about that."
He sat back.
"All I am saying is that this game is not going to go the way all of you think it is going to go. Chelsea have the potential to shock everybody in this building."
Then he paused.
And a small smile came onto his face.
"And I know why you are talking like this."
He turned and looked directly at Thierry.
"As for you, well. I cannot say I am surprised any more about why you changed your own stance on Barcelona."
Thierry blinked and pointed at his own chest.
"Me?"
"Ooooh," Micah said.
"Yes. You." Jamie was smiling now, fully. "You know we all watched that Madrid Barcelona game."
"OOOOH." Micah's mouth fell open, and it was immediately obvious he knew exactly what was coming.
Thierry was still lost, still smiling.
"I am so lost here. Genuinely."
"Oh, really?" Jamie turned around in his chair toward the gallery. "Can you all play the clip, please?"
"What clip?" Thierry looked between them. "What clip?"
"See." Micah was pointing past him, laughing. "See. See. SEE."
Thierry turned.
And on the big screen behind the desk, the Clásico came up.
Not the goal. The celebration after it. Thierry Henry, in the middle of a Barcelona pile, and specifically Thierry Henry and Mateo King, face to face, gripping each other, both of them screaming at the top of their lungs directly into one another with their eyes wide open.
Thierry started laughing.
"Oh. THAT."
"Look at him GO." Micah was almost crying. "Wow. WOW."
"See the way his veins are popping," Jamie said, wheezing. "Look at his neck. LOOK at his neck."
He gestured at the screen with both hands.
"After celebrating like that, mate, it is honestly no surprise at all why you are ten toes down with them now."
He looked at it again and shook his head.
"I mean, look at this. Look at it. From here it seems to me like you were the one who actually scored the goal."
The whole studio went up, the crew laughing behind the cameras.
Thierry put both hands up.
"Okay. Okay."
He waited for them to come down, and when he spoke again the laughter had gone out of his voice and something else had come into it.
"But listen. Listen to me for one second."
He pointed at the screen.
"Look at what it meant to the kid. Look at his face there. Not mine. His."
They all looked.
"You cannot fake that," Thierry said. "That is not something a player can produce for a camera. That is not media training. He had just scored, and he came and found the nearest person alive and screamed into their face, and I happened to be there."
He shook his head, smiling.
"That is passion. That is a seventeen-year-old boy who cares about that shirt more than he cares about how he looks doing it. You saw him shouting in Rio's face after the third one. Same thing. He does not know how to be cool about it. He does not want to be."
He tapped the desk.
"And you can say what you want about tactics and shapes and underdogs. But that thing, right there, in a final."
He looked around the desk.
"If that is what you are talking about, then yes. I think that will be a game changer today."
Nobody said anything for a second.
Then Jamie cleared his throat.
"Okay. Okay, fine. It seems to me we are not going anywhere with this one."
He shuffled forward.
"Have you all seen the rumours about the Barcelona lineup?"
He glanced off to the side.
"Actually, how long until the lineups drop?"
Kate checked.
"Any minute now. We should have them very shortly."
"As for the rumours," Thierry said, "I honestly think it is rubbish."
"Exactly." Jamie pointed at him. "Because tell me why, after everything, after all of it, you would want to go and change your lineup in the final stretch?"
"That is probably an exaggeration anyway," Micah said. "It is probably one or two modifications, if he even does anything at all."
"That is the problem, though." Jamie's voice came up. "There should not even be one. There should not be any."
He was leaning in now.
"This is the lineup that has won you every single one of those games. This exact one. This is the lineup that beat PSG. That went toe to toe with Bayern. That beat Manchester City. These same men, in these same positions, doing the same jobs, all season long."
He hit the desk lightly with his palm.
"And I have never been a fan of it. Never. You play one style, one way, all season, you build a team, you build an understanding, these lads know where each other are without looking. And then you reach the biggest game of the entire season and THAT is the day you decide to start changing things around?"
He shook his head.
"No. Trust what got you here. Trust it. Because it has not let you down once."
Thierry nodded slowly.
"I really do not believe it, personally. Koeman has been very stable in what he believes all season. Very stable. It is probably just a rumour."
Jamie sat back.
"Well. It had better be."
He looked at the screen.
"Because if Koeman does decide to change anything today, that is just going to be one more reason why Chelsea are able to clinch this."
...
While the CBS crew were still going at each other across the desk, the Estádio do Dragão was already filling up.
It had been filling for hours.
They had started arriving in the early afternoon, long before any gate opened, standing in the sun outside the turnstiles in shirts that were already soaked through, drinking, singing, taking photographs of a stadium they had not yet been let into. By the time the gates finally went up the queues had wrapped the whole way around the ground, and the noise of it, thousands of people all singing different songs at the same time, could be heard from four streets away.
Now the bowl was more than half full and it was already loud.
Down at one end, the Barcelona sections were a solid wall of red and blue. Flags going up the whole way to the roof, some of them enormous, some of them hand-painted on bedsheets. Men with no shirts on standing on their seats with their arms round each other. A group of about two hundred bouncing in unison, all of them coming down at exactly the same time, the whole section moving with them.
They were singing their hearts out, and they were nowhere near tired yet.
"BAR-ÇA! BAR-ÇA! BAAAAAR-ÇA!"
Then, breaking through it, somewhere in the middle of that end, a single voice found a rhythm and threw it out.
"WHO IS HE?"
And ten thousand of them answered.
"MA-TE-O!"
"WHERE'S HE FROM?"
"LA MASIA!"
"WHAT IS HE GIVING US?"
"THE FUTURE!"
It went round and round, faster each time, until the whole end was on it, the words tumbling over each other, the drum somewhere behind them hammering it along.
At the other end of the ground, the blue half of the stadium was doing exactly the same thing in a different language.
Chelsea had come in numbers. They had come with flags and with banners hung over the front of the tier, some of them the sort that had been in families for thirty years. And in the middle of one of those blocks, a man in his forties with a scarf tied round his wrist was standing up on the seat with his back to the pitch, facing his own people, both arms in the air, conducting.
"OI!" he shouted. "OI! LISTEN!"
The section quieted, waiting.
"THEY DON'T BELIEVE IN US!"
A roar came back at him.
"THEY DON'T BELIEVE IN US!" he shouted again, and this time he had them, and this time they came with him.
"THEY DON'T BELIEVE IN US,THEY NEVER DID,BUT WE'RE STILL HERE,AND WE'RE GONNA WIN!
WE ARE THE MIGHTY BLUES,WE COME FROM LONDON TOWN,CHELSEA! CHELSEA! CHELSEA!"
The whole end had it inside three goes.
Then it was just the last part, over and over, faster and faster, twenty thousand voices going.
"CHELSEA! CHELSEA! CHELSEA! CHELSEA!"
And at the far end, the Barcelona sections heard it, and answered it, and the two of them started fighting over the top of each other across the length of the pitch, neither one giving an inch, both of them getting louder for it.
That was still an hour before kick-off.
And it was not only in the stands.
All over the world, people were sitting down.
Paris.
In a house that was too big for the number of people in it, a group of men were spread across three enormous sofas in a room with a television that took up most of one wall.
Neymar was in the middle of them, one leg up, going through his pockets.
"Where is my. Hey. Hey, pass me that."
Somebody threw him a phone charger. He caught it without looking.
"No, not that one. The other one. On the table, by your."
"This?"
"Yeah. That."
The man sitting nearest to him, one arm along the back of the sofa, was staring at the screen where the pre-match build-up was rolling.
"But damn, though." He shook his head. "I never expected Barcelona to reach the final. Never. I was so sure City were going to beat them for sure."
He puffed out a breath.
"I hope they win."
Neymar did not answer straight away.
He was looking at the screen too now, at the badge in the corner of it, at the crest he had worn for four years, at a stadium full of people singing songs he still knew every word of.
Something went across his face that was not simple.
"Yeah," he said softly.
Germany.
"GOAAAAAL! GOAL! GET IN, MAN! GET IN!"
Jude Bellingham was on his feet with both arms and his head thrown back at the ceiling, the controller still in one hand, shouting at nobody.
"GET IN!"
Beside him on the sofa, Erling Haaland was staring at the screen with his mouth slightly open. Then he looked down at his controller.
Then he started slapping it against his own palm.
"Dude." Slap. "My pad." Slap. "My pad is not working properly."
"Hey. HEY."
Jude spun round.
"Hey, what are you doing? What are you DOING?"
He snatched it clean out of Haaland's hands.
"Do not take your frustrations out on my things, man. That is my controller. Mine. Buy your own."
"It is not working."
"It is working perfectly, you are just shit."
From somewhere else in the house, a woman's voice came down the hallway.
"Boys! Come out! The match is going to start soon!"
Both their heads turned.
"COMING, MA!"
Jude was already getting up, tossing both controllers onto the sofa cushion.
"Come on. Let's go watch the game."
Haaland stood up, laughing, shaking his head as he went.
"I still cannot believe you live with your mum."
Jude punched him in the arm.
"Shut up."
Manchester.
In a study with the curtains half drawn, a man sat alone at a desk with a pen in his mouth.
Pep Guardiola was not really biting it. He was rolling it slowly between his teeth, the way he had done for twenty years, his eyes fixed somewhere in the middle distance about a foot above the surface of the desk.
There were papers in front of him. There had been papers in front of him for hours.
"Grealish," he muttered around the pen. "Ehn?"
He tapped the pen twice against his lower lip.
"Grealish."
He shook his head slightly at whatever the answer was, and then his eyes came up and found the television on the far side of the room, where the Champions League final build-up was playing, the camera moving across a stadium that was singing itself hoarse.
He watched it for a moment.
The pen came out of his mouth.
"The lineups are out."
Turin.
The house sat above the hills with the lights of the city laid out below it, all glass and pale stone, the sort of place that gets photographed. Inside, the main room ran the length of the building, floor to ceiling windows down one side, everything in it either white or the colour of sand.
A television the size of a doorway was already on.
And in front of it, a man was standing with his hands on his hips, all shoulders, not an ounce of anything spare on him anywhere, looking off toward the stairs.
"Georgina!"
He waited.
"Georgina, are you not ready yet? The match is going to start soon!"
A voice floated back down from somewhere upstairs.
"I am coming! I am coming!"
He stood there.
He looked back at the screen. He looked back at the stairs.
"What is she even doing," he muttered.
He put a hand through his hair.
"Even the kids." He turned his head, looking down the hallway. "Where are they? Where are all of them?"
Then, loud enough to reach the whole house:
"JUNIOR! Gather your sisters and your brother and come, the match is starting soon!"
Somewhere above him a door opened and small feet started running.
He turned back to the television.
On the screen, the Estádio do Dragão was shaking itself apart, twenty thousand people in blue at one end and thirty thousand in red and blue at the other, and a man on a gantry somewhere was reading out two teamsheets.
The man in the room folded his arms.
And the man the myth the legend, Cristiano Ronaldo, had also tuned in for the Champions League final.
The little feet arrived first.
Cristiano Junior came skidding into the room in socks, took the corner too fast, nearly went into the side of the sofa, and recovered.
"Papá. Papá, who is playing?" one of the little ones started asking.
"Barcelona and Chelsea."
Junior climbed up onto the sofa and sat back on his heels.
"Who are we supporting?"
Cristiano looked down at him.
"We are watching, filho. We are just watching."
"But who do you want to win?"
Cristiano did not answer.
He looked back up at the screen, where the camera was drifting along a line of names.
Junior watched him for a second.
"They are saying Barcelona are the favourites," Junior said. Then, quickly, because he was seven and he understood the politics of his own living room: "On the television. They said it on the television, not me."
Cristiano laughed once through his nose.
"They say a lot of things on the television."
Georgina came in behind them then, still doing an earring, and stopped when she saw the two of them.
"Are we watching or are we not watching?"
"We are watching."
She looked at the side of his face, at the way he had not sat down, at the way his arms were folded across his chest and his jaw had set.
"You are going to be like this the whole match, are you."
"Like what?"
"Like that."
Cristiano did not take his eyes off the screen.
"I am relaxed."
"Mm," Georgina said, and went to sit down.
And after a moment, Cristiano Ronaldo sat down, in a house in Turin, with his son beside him and his arms still folded, in front of a television showing a stadium in Porto that was chanting so many things.
He watched the graphic sit there a moment longer before it cut away.
He shook his head, very slightly, and something that was almost a smile went across his mouth and was gone again.
"Let us see what you have got, then."
...
The Barcelona dressing room was almost silent.
Not the silence of an empty room. The other kind. The kind that has twenty men in it and still does not make a sound.
They were dressed. All of them. Shirts on, shorts on, socks up, the tape wound tight around the ankles, boots laced and re-laced and laced again. The kit man had done his rounds twenty minutes ago and had nothing left to do. The physios had done their last checks. There was nothing left that anybody needed to say out loud.
So nobody said it.
Piqué sat with his elbows on his knees, staring at a spot on the floor between his boots. He had not moved in four minutes.
Alba was on his feet against the wall, rolling his shoulders, one and then the other, over and over.
Busquets was flat on his back on the treatment table with his eyes closed and his hands folded across his chest, breathing slowly through his nose, as calm as a man waiting for a train.
Ter Stegen sat on the floor with his back against his own stall, both gloves already on, slapping them together softly, once every few seconds. Slap. Pause. Slap.
Dembélé had his headphones on and was not listening to anything. He had taken them off twice and put them back on twice.
Pedri kept looking at the door.
Somewhere above them and around them, through the concrete, the stadium was making a noise that did not have a shape to it. It came through the walls as a low continuous pressure, rising every so often when something happened up there, then falling back, then rising again. Fifty thousand people, sitting directly on top of them.
Koeman had said his piece already. He had said it fifteen minutes ago and he had kept it short, and now he was standing over by the door with his arms folded, watching his players and saying nothing at all, because there was nothing left that a coach could give them.
Mateo sat with his boots planted flat on the floor and his hands hanging between his knees.
His heart was going.
Not fast. Hard. He could feel it in his throat and behind his eyes and in the tips of his fingers, the whole of him keeping time with it.
He looked down at his own hands.
They were shaking. Just slightly. Just enough for him to see it.
He curled them into fists, and held them, and let them go, and they were still shaking.
Okay.
Okay.
He breathed in through his nose and held it and let it out.
This is it. This is the one. This is the actual one.
Somewhere above them, the noise went up again and stayed up.
And in the middle of all that quiet, on the far side of the room, Lionel Messi opened his eyes.
He had been sitting completely still for a long time, hands together, head down. Nobody had spoken to him. Nobody ever did in the last few minutes.
He put both palms on his knees.
And he stood up.
The sound of it, the small scrape of his boots on the floor, went through that room like a gunshot.
Every single head came up.
Piqué stopped staring at the floor. Alba stopped rolling his shoulders. Busquets opened his eyes on the table and turned his head. Ter Stegen's gloves went still. Dembélé pulled the headphones down around his neck.
Mateo lifted his head, and his hands stopped shaking.
Messi walked out into the middle of the room.
He did not hurry. He got to the centre of that floor and he stopped, and he turned, and he looked at them. All of them. One at a time, all the way around the room, the way he had been doing it for fifteen years, at every single face in that dressing room.
He did not look nervous.
He looked like a man who had been waiting three years for a door to open.
And when he spoke, his voice came out low and heavy and completely steady.
"It's time, boys."
A/N
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